Day 117 – Tuesday (12/18/18)

Next blog update will be posted by Saturday, December 22nd, at midnight.

–

Hello again everyone.  I did it again!  Two weeks in a row now I have forgotten to update the blog!  I apologize for the post being a couple of days late.  This week it wasn’t a snowstorm that got me side tracked, but rather my college graduation.  If you go back to the preface, you may remember that I had just finished my final project/presentation and wrapped up my college classes at the end of July (just before I started having symptoms that turned out to be Blobby).  My college, however, did not have a commencement ceremony for summer semester graduates.  Instead, Summer 2018 graduates were asked to join the Fall 2018 ceremony.  I personally had no interest in walking across the stage since I already had my diploma mailed to me, however my wife insisted that I go.  I’ll be honest, once I got there and participated, I did actually enjoy it.  The irony of the graduation was that it was my first time on campus.  I was a distance learning student and had never actual visited the school.  They did, however, have a satellite “campus” near my house, which I was able to attend for the in-person class requirements. Nonetheless, I digress.  The campus was very nice, and the ceremony was very professional and efficient.  There were right at 900 graduates in my class.

Another week is in the books.  10 down, 8 to go.  My “bad” week lasted an extra day and a half this time.  Usually I start to feel better after 7 days… but this time it was about day 9 I started feeling better.  This is somewhat expected, as the doctor says the chemo builds up in your system more and more with each cycle.  Today as I type, I feel good.  I know the scans showed improvement, but I’m feeling improvement as well, which is encouraging.  Even if the last two cycles make me feel bad… say 10 and 11 days respectively, I’m still okay with that.  Its definitely manageable.  My next cycle infusion is on December 27th, so it is awesome that I am able to make it through Christmas without it being one of the rough weeks.  My children wound up being out of school the entire week last week due to the snowstorm.  They are back at school this week for just 3 days, then Christmas break starts, and lasts for 2 weeks.  The peace and quiet I have enjoyed during my recovery is being thrown into disarray, haha.

Dear heavenly Father, thank You for another week.  Thank You for continuing to help me through this process.  You have truly taken away a large part of the burden relative to how rough I thought this would be.  Lord, there are several people in our Church and on our prayer chain that are going through rough times as well (for various things).  Please be with each of them.  Provide them the same strength and encouragement you have shown me.  Thank You for always being there for all of us.  Amen.